The six-month drive-thru closure resulted in a $400,000 revenue loss, the company claims, while repair of the pipe and pumping of the accumulating stormwater cost over $1 million.
Berne-Knox-Westerlo is looking at a roughly $700,000 shortfall in its 2025-26 budget despite a 3.3 percent property-tax hike, due to widespread cost increases and decreases in state aid. The gap will have to be closed through “creative” reductions, Superintendent Bonnie Kane said.
In the end, the draft budget restored 70 percent of the first-grade teaching assistants. It also restored two-tenths of a librarian’s position at Altamont Elementary School, another cut that had spurred protests from a committed Altamont contingent.
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